Steve Parks - Centreville Spy

Artists Paint the Farm After Shakespearean Thunder Opens Plein Air Easton

July 16, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

For Stephen Griffin, the 2023 Plein Air Easton (PAE) festival is his 17th in 18 years and his 13th in a row. “Plein Air is the reason I moved to Easton,” he said while dabbing finishing touches on his “Sheep at the Barn” oil painting as two horses tried to get in the picture.

Griffin was living in Edgewater, along the South River near Annapolis, when Cedric Egeli, a friend who later painted the official portrait of then-Gov. Larry Hogan suggested he apply for a new outdoor painting competition across the Chesapeake Bay. “To me, Easton was just a place you drive by on the way to the ocean,” he recalls. But after his first-time painting scenes in and around town, “I told Cedric, ‘If you can find me a studio, I’m moving here.’ And two weeks later, I moved to Easton.”

Not all 57 artists from across the United States – plus one from Italy – are so impressed with Plein Air Easton, now in its 19th year, that they would move here. But all ten painters interviewed at Saturday’s sold-out Meet the Artists event sang their PAE praises.

Christine Lashley of Reston, Virginia, calls the festival “an incredible event. Basically, all you have to do all week is to paint. It fosters creativity.” Lashley and her fellow artists compete for a juried ribbon and sales of one or more of their paintings. Olena Babak, who drove down from Hartland, Maine, for her eighth Plein Air Easton, says, “The way they treat us is completely unmatched.” Other festival organizers “are nice to us wherever else we go. But here, they treat us like kings and queens.” As a result, Babak says, she has completed up to 12 paintings during a week’s stay.

Kim VanDerHoek “Onward and Upward”

Kim VanDerHoek, who flew in for her eighth PAE from Orange, California, painted along the shoreline confluence of the Wye River with Gross and Lloyd creeks framing a view of Wye Island and, in the distance from Gross Coate Farm, Bennett’s Point in Queen Anne’s County. She joked about the clouds over the scene she was committing to her 24-by-36-inch canvas. “They don’t pose for you,” she said, adding that she chose her spot beneath a sprawling tree for the shade and a breeze off the water as relief from the smothering afternoon humidity.

Nearby, in the shade of a weeping willow, DK Palecek said she “drove like a banshee” for 15 hours from Kaukauna, Wisconsin, for her first Plein Air Easton. At Meet the Artists, she switched locations on the farm’s vast lawn where she had sketched a stand of trees in the blazing sun before moving to the waterfront for a respite, adding orange daylilies to her composite painting.

Richard Sneary painting Gross Coate mansion

Placing his easel under a linden tree with a second-story veranda stretching across its hefty branches, Richard Sneary, a retired Kansas City, Missouri, architectural artist, painted the 1760 brick mansion of the Gross Coate estate. “I like the character of old buildings in their natural setting,” he said, noting that he’s done many new architectural wonders, including Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Ravens’ stadium before it was named for a bank.

Near the foot of the lane leading to the mansion, Philip Carlton painted on a smaller scale – a 6-by-10-inch hardwood board. He chose a shady spot overlooking a large pond upon which a steady breeze and sparkling sun reflections created a constant ripple against a treeline background through which a field of sunflowers peeked. From western Colorado near the Utah border, Carlton was returning for his third PAE for its “very different landscape and bright greens,” as opposed to the desert hues where he lives. “But I don’t think I could live here,” he said of the heat and humidity. “I’ll take 105 degrees back home to 85 degrees here.”

By 6 in the evening, many of the day’s paintings had been mounted near the waterfront for show and sale under a tent surrounded by cocktail tables and sofa lawn furniture arranged in quadrants, most with umbrellas. By 7, gray-white stripes of evening clouds partially obscured the sun before it set—no thunderstorms in sight. Several paintings were already marked SOLD, even as they went up under the tent. It’s not unusual for Meet the Artist’s paintings to attract a buyer even before it’s finished and framed.

Griffin, the artist who moved to Easton after his first Plein Air, put his “Sheep at the Barn” up for a modest $900, while California painter VanDerHoek sought $6,300 for her “Upward and Onward.”

The festival continues with painting demonstrations through the week at PAE headquarters in the Waterfowl Building at Harrison and South streets and in Tilghman on Monday, July 17, and an Easton “paint-in” on Tuesday. Tickets to the Collector’s Preview Party on Friday, July 21, give a head start on the show-and-sale opening to the public. The preview ticket price can be applied to your art purchase. The smell of fresh oil paint permeates this event as signs warn you of “Wet Paint” on many works.

A July 22 kids competition concludes the next day with an exhibit, sale, and prizes. Awards in various categories of the professional competition, juried by painter Jove Wang, go up for show and sale at the Academy Art Museum on the final day, Sunday, July 23.

Across the street at Christ Church, “Local Color,” a show and sale outside the PAE festival, is open July 20-23.

***

Plein Air Easton festivities began indoors with Friday afternoon-into-evening receptions at three downtown art galleries.

Troika Gallery opened its fourth annual “Fabulous Forgeries” exhibit featuring artists it represents who have copied some of the Great Masters’ greatest hits on canvas. In addition, works by Sara Linda Poly, the 2016 Plein Air grand prize winner, and classically based paintings by Matt Zoll are on show and sale through Aug. 31.

Further down Harrison Street, Trippe Gallery premiered its “Women in Plein Air” exhibit of works by seven artists among 20 past and/or current PAE painters, including Jill Basham of Trappe, who has appeared in every Plein Air Easton festival since 2012.

Turning the corner onto Goldsborough, Studio B hosted a reception for its “Masterstrokes: Visions of Jove Wang” show running through July 24. Jove is a juror for this year’s Plein Air Easton.

As the gallery receptions drew to a close, an audience estimated at 200 was assembling in lawn chairs arrayed on Harrison in front of the Tidewater Inn for Perfect Storm Productions’ presentation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on a stage adorned with plastic flowers and blinking-light garlands bathed in clamshell footlights.

The tale of mismatched lovers, confused by magic and mischief, was performed by a large and nimble cast and crew that dodged raindrops as thunder dispersed some of the crowd near the show’s end.

A video intro to “Pyramus and Thisbe,” the tragedy within the comedy, drew robust applause for Wall, erected by the couple’s fathers to keep the lovers apart. A final resolution of love lost, found, and reassembled is portrayed in immersive style as a cast of fairies, a jester in donkey ears, and a vagabond troupe of players mingle with the audience as a royal wedding becomes one for four couples whose love survives the harrowing “dream.”

Rain all but curtailed the “Nocturne Paint-Out” scheduled to follow the play, though a few artists with easels painted scenes from the “Midsummer’s Night” show. (The final performance is at 7 p.m. Sunday at Oxford Community Center.)

More festival highlights include the Collector’s Preview Party on July 21, The Plein Air Quick Draw Competition on Saturday from 10am to 2pm which is open to anyone and will see thousands of collectors and over 200 artists painting in a two block area of downtown Easton. The Next Generation Painting Competition, for painters 18 and under runs on Saturday as well from 10am to 3pm. The festival concludes this Sunday, July 22, at Small Painting Sunday from 10am to 3pm with complimentary Bloody Marys and Mimosas and at 2pm The Judges Talk where Plein Air Easton Judge, Master Jove Wang will reveal why he chose each of the winning paintings. Plein Air Easton Headquarters is open with hundreds of freshly painted Eastern Shore scenes daily except for Thursday. More details at pleinaireaston.com.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

PLEIN AIR EASTON
Through July 23 in Easton and various Talbot County locations. pleinaireaston.com

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Good News: Baltimore Symphony’s Return Homecoming to the Shore

July 4, 2023 by Steve Parks 1 Comment

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as part of its Music for Maryland summer touring season, returns to Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center for the first time since 2016.

The Music for Maryland series opens July 8 with a concert at Harford Community College’s APG Federal Credit Union Arena, then makes its first Eastern Shore appearance at Elkton High School auditorium on July 21 with a program leading off with Mozart’s “Magic Flute” Overture.

The Chesapeake College concert, the first since Marin Alsop, now the BSO music director emeritus, conducted the orchestra in its 100th anniversary season with a program of the classic of classics, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), and the Oboe Concerto by Christopher Rouse, then still a living composer. (He died in 2019.)

For nearly two decades to that time, the BSO had played at Chesapeake College every year until interrupted by scheduling cutbacks, in part due to lengthy contract negotiations with its musicians, the emergence of the Delmarva’s own Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, and later by COVID restrictions.

This makes the July 29th Wye Mills 29 concert an on-the-road return homecoming for the BSO. Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser conducts a repertoire beginning with Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance, Op. 72, No. 7 in C major, followed by the third movement of belatedly celebrated African-American composer Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1, followed by Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from “Eugene Onegin,” Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, Piazzolla’s “Summer” from “Four Seasons in Buenos Aires” and capped by the rousing fourth movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

The Music for Maryland BSO tour covers nine of the state’s 23 counties representing every geographic region from the Shore to St. Mary’s in southern Maryland on Aug. 5, with the finale in mountainous Garrett County on Aug. 6.

By the way, tickets are a Pay-What-You-Wish bargain or a suggested $10 donation. The concert starts at 730 PM.

bsomusic.org/events

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Spy Arts Diary: Avalon Paintings & Pictures, 4th Fireworks, and Much More

June 25, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Not to be confused with the Avalon Theatre in Chevy Chase, straddling northwest Washington, D.C. near the line into Montgomery County, the Avalon Theater in Easton celebrated its centennial in 2022, while Chevy Chase’s Avalon is observing its 100th anniversary by screening great films from each decade of its existence. If you’re curious, the next movie – to be determined (no, not its actual title) – is from the 1970s and will be screened on July 16.

Jill Basham’s “Time Travel Wye House,” Plein Air Easton Festival, 2022

Meanwhile, the Avalon in Easton one-ups its junior namesake by moving through its 101st anniversary with one of the most successful programs of its storied history. The Avalon Foundation’s 19th annual Plein Air Festival, regarded as the most prestigious and arguably largest such juried competition in the United States, opens July 14 with a kick-off party stroll-through downtown art galleries and other smart shops that dish out raffle tickets commensurate with your retail purchases while you enjoy pop-up street concerts. Following the raffle drawing and prizes – you must stick around to win – a live, interactive street performance of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” breaks out in front of the Tidewater Inn just as dark settles in and the “Nocturne Paint Out” commences with amateurs invited to set up easels next to festival competition artists as, together, they paint the town.

But that’s just the start. July 15 is your opportunity to see paintings evolve as you watch at the “Meet the Artists Party,” where most, if not all, of the artists in competition gather at this year’s historic venue situated at the confluence of the Gross and Lloyd creeks and the Wye River. Gross Coate Farm and its namesake Georgian plantation mansion were patented to William Gross in 1658 and became the ancestral home of the Tilghman family for 250 years. Unobstructed waterfront views in three directions stretch out to Wye Island straight ahead and Bennett’s Point in the distance, challenging talented artists to match its beauty. Guests can wander this magnificent estate and watch as painters create their interpretation of the vantage points they’ve selected. Admission is by charitable-giving membership in Friends of Plein Air Easton. Most people are there to buy, so don’t wait until the oil or watercolor dries. If it looks promising to your eye, make an offer before the painting is done, or you may lose it to a rival Plein Air friend.

Competition, not so much among the artists as the buyers, also applies to the Collectors’ Preview Party on July 21, during which your admission ticket allows you two hours or less to buy a potential masterpiece before everyone else is admitted free. (The cost of your ticket can be applied to your purchase.) Recent preview parties resulted in an average painting sold every 45 seconds. Even after the preview ends, the fresh smell of oil and other painterly applications lure art lovers for hours as signs warn them not to touch lest they smear the artist’s imagery.

While artists come from all over the U.S. and beyond to compete and sell their paintings at Plein Air Easton, Jill Basham of Trappe has been a fixture in the festival, appearing every year since 2012, winning a third-place ribbon. Basham also won the Best Painting by a Maryland Artist prize in 2015 and Best in Show in the limited 2020 pandemic edition.

Avalon Foundation’s Plein Air Easton is a one-of-kind-festival where you can experience art as a live performance event in town and all around Talbot County.

But if it’s a classic film centennial you’re looking for, Avalon in D.C. has just the ticket. Full disclosure, I only discovered this by googling Avalon centennial and coming up with that other one. Personally, I’m sticking to Easton’s Avalon’s centennial plus 1.

Avalon Plein Air Easton & Avalon Centennial Chevy Chase
pleinaireaston.com; theavalon.org/programs/centennial-program

Mark Nelson’s “Bison Pause” at Dorchester Center for the Arts

***
July is summertime anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, and sometimes you need relief from the heat. Besides its air-conditioned galleries, Dorchester Center for the Arts in downtown Cambridge offers a visual escape to another of the four seasons with its photography exhibit “Yellowstone in Winter,” July 1-29. In February 2022, six skilled amateur photographers – three Ph.D. nutritionists, a human services administrator, a financial planner, and a bagpiper – embarked on a 10-day project to share their digital views of Yellowstone National Park, hoping to capture its natural wonder and majesty.

The photographers in the show are native New Yorker Janet Kerr, a retired researcher at the National Institute of Health; Bill McDonnell, who won several photo competitions in Fairfax County, Virginia, and more recently as a member of the Dorchester arts center; Mark Nelson, who took up photography in sixth grade after winning a camera as a prize for selling magazine subscriptions; Joe Soares, a retired University of Maryland, College Park, professor, who says climate change has driven him to “use photography to document the delicate nature of our woods and wetlands”; Randy Welch, who as a young commercial fisherman in Alaska, photographed wildlife ranging from humpback whales to wolves and eagles, and Wayne Zussman, who says he believes “a photograph should always tell a story.”

A Saturday, July 8 reception with the artists starts at 5 p.m.

dorchesterarts.org

***
You can enjoy Independence Day fireworks all over Delmarva, but for a truly Capital Fourth, think about traveling to the Nation’s Capital. However, if you’re sticking closer to home, fireworks get an early weekend start over St. Michaels Harbor on Saturday, July 1, at dusk. Go to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum campus for unparalleled viewing. (Admission to CBMM is free after 5 p.m. that day.) Celebratory bombs burst over Chestertown on Tuesday, July 4, along either the Kent or Queen Anne’s county sides of the Chester River. The best viewing is aboard the River Packet that sails out about 7:30 p.m. or at Town Dock at the foot of High Street. In Cambridge, fireworks shoot into the dark skies over the Choptank River on the Fourth, with the best views at Great Marsh and Long Wharf parks on the Dorchester side. But you can also take in the show on the Talbot side of the Choptank.

For a D.C. Fourth, consider staying overnight Monday through Wednesday morning. The celebration starts early with the Independence Day Parade along Constitution Avenue between 7th and 17th streets. A fife and drum corps leads the way for military servicemen and women, keeping step to marching bands ahead of colorful patriotic floats, all starting at 11:45 a.m.

From there, it’s an easy walk to the National Archives, where you can see the original Declaration of Independence and other historic artifacts. On the Mall nearby, take in any free Smithsonian Museums sites, the National Gallery of Art, or the memorials and monuments – from Lincoln to Washington to World War II. But, be warned, it’s a longer walk than it looks to the Capitol. After squeezing in a late lunch/early dinner break, you may still have energy for the spectacular fireworks show over the Mall starting at around 9 p.m. While free tickets for the concert beforehand on the West Lawn of the Capitol aren’t easy to come by, try asking your congressional representative. The best bet may be to record it back home and take in the mix of Americana genres, classical music, and patriotic salutes upon your return.

If you’re staying an extra day, complete your three-day Fourth holiday with a half-hour drive to Mount Vernon to see how George, the Founding Father himself, lived back in the day of the nation’s birth as you listen to Revolutionary War-era music. Having seen the river view from his home, I’m sure that Washington–said never to have lied (I don’t believe that either) –once threw a silver dollar across the mile-wide Potomac. Not even a Cy Young arm is that mighty.

nps.gov/subjects/nationalmall4th/things-to-do.htm

***
While baseball may not seem a subject for an arts column, it certainly qualifies as Americana. There’s a fashion aspect to this mention of the Baltimore Orioles, now the toast of the town. Make a fashion statement by attending the Friday, June 30, game against the Minnesota Twins while fitting yourself with the Orioles Floppy Hat giveaway. (Gametime 7:05 at Camden Yards.) Or take in two games and further accessorize with a Birdland Hawaiian Shirt at the 4:05 game with the Twins on July 1. There are no free threads for Sunday’s contest, but the 12:05 start allows kids or grandkids to run the major league bases after the O’s have defeated the Twins.

For a literary link to hometown baseball, Oriole Park is not far from the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, where on the first Saturday of the month – in this case, July 1 – you can book a bus for a guided exploration of circumstances surrounding Poe’s life and death in Baltimore. The 90-minute macabre tour includes a visit to BOTH of his graves – was he buried twice?! – each one close to where he was found and later passed away. Of sport-worthy note, Poe’s connection to Baltimore inspired the former Cleveland Browns football franchise, which relocated to Charm City in 1996, to be renamed the Ravens. And may it remain so, quoth the Raven, evermore.

BTW: The O’s challenge the Yankees in the Bronx over July 4 weekend.

orioles.com; poeinbaltimore.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Showing Pride on the Delmarva

June 17, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

The second annual Delmarva Pride Festival opened Friday night at Easton’s Avalon Theater with a drag show featuring six queens strutting their sequined stuff on the Art Deco stage before mingling with a cafe-style audience who stuffed their hands and décolletage costumes with dollar bills. Even in high-rise heels, most also went upstairs to the boisterous fans seated in the balcony.

Miss Pride of Salisbury Tania Lashay at the Delmarva Pride Drag Show

Queen of queens Miranda Bryant played host for a 2 1/2-hour pageant that also showcased Vicky Fischer, Kedra Lattimore, Kandi Pop, Brie Daniels, and Tania Lashay, the 2022 Miss Pride of Salisbury – all performing to recorded dance music.

Bryant, a drag veteran who admitted to a half-century plus one in age, lip-synced to a superstar of her mother’s generation, Dolly Parton while stripping to his bustier as dollars rained down from above and hand-to-hand from patrons at the 22 cafe tables below.

Kandi Pop, presumably a stage name, was introduced by Bryant as bisexual and transgender-in-progress – “I’m so confused,” he added jokingly. “Pop” was the first to run up the stairs to wow the balcony crowd. Everyone else followed Kandi’s example, even if by slow-moving elevator.

A statuesque Lashay took the drag soundtrack to hip-hop attention with a Beyonce number athletically delivered with a crowd-pleasing backflip, then closed her third round in the drag sequence with a hoot-inducing twerk.

Kandi Pop with Pride Drag Show host Miranda Bryant

Of Brie Daniels – we learned in the final number as he revealed himself as decidedly male Brian – host Bryant said, “We went through puberty together.” Brie’s skimpy outfit brought on a veritable torrent of dollar bills streaming down from one corner of the balcony.

If any drag-show virgin in the audience doubted that the singing was lip-synced, Kedra Lattimore, in her pastel gown, complete with wedding-style train, proved it was all recorded. No one on earth can sing like Whitney Houston, tragically not even Whitney anymore. Vicky Fischer picked up the rest of “I Will Always Love You” before segueing into a hot dance number to match his vibrantly curly red wig.

Delmarva Pride chair Kyle O’Donnell had advised attendees to “bring your dollar bills” – which they did in spades – some while re-upping at the cash bar. As for ticket sales, O’Donnell said that “100 percent goes to support the work of Delmarva Pride Center,” which includes monthly socials “to encourage people to come out and feel a sense of belonging and community in public.” Coming up in July is a pool party, bowling in August, and a nature hike in September. More importantly, money raised in this and other fund-raisers will go toward a brick-and-mortar Delmarva Pride Center – a true home base.

The Pride Festival continues Saturday with a Harrison Street fair from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., including main-stage entertainment hosted by MC Ryan featuring headliner Danah Denice along with The Sagacious Traveler, Madisun Bailey, Cameron Mae & Danny Alvarez, plus drag show reprises from the night before as well as new acts. And there’s an art show as well.

More than 100 vendors have signed up to sell their wares and wearables, along with food trucks and beverage stands, and, of course, people from Delmarva Pride to tell you everything you need to know about their work and what they’re abou

“We offer the Mid-Shore, Upper Shore LGBTQ community a safe space to be themselves,” says Tina Jones, a Wittman native and secretary/treasurer of Delmarva Pride.

“It goes back to visibility,” says Concetta Gibson, co-chair of Delmarva Pride. “Our center, what we do, makes it easier for us to find each other.”

“It’s about freedom to be yourself and having support to help keep your head up,” Ivan Colon says, adding that being a gay Latino can “reduce your earning power.”

Citing “intersectionality” – having more than one or two strikes against you in the eyes of those who hate people who are not like them – Jones, a white trans woman, says, “A black, trans woman is 14 times more likely to commit suicide.” Besides discrimination and violence against them, the trans community and others in the LGBTQ alphabet face legislative attacks, too. “More than 500 laws have been introduced in this country to make it more difficult for them to live their lives. Some of these laws mean that they can even take your kids away from you.”

Still, Jones feels lucky, she says, because “I came out later in life.” Now 56, Jones had a successful career that gave her the strength to keep her head up in the face of people who think that her transition is – somehow – any of their business.

But when she did come out, Jones says, “I ripped the doors off the closet.”

The Pride Festival winds up on Sunday morning, 10 a.m.-noon, with a Pride Brunch at ArtBar 2.0 in downtown Cambridge.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

DELMARVA PRIDE FESTIVAL

Friday, June 16-Sunday, June 18, in Easton and Cambridge, delmarvapridecenter.com

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Delmarva Pride Will Come out in Force this Weekend

June 15, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

The second annual Delmarva Pride Festival opens Friday night at Easton’s Avalon Theater. The Pride Drag Show features six queens who will strut their stuff on the Art Deco stage one at a time before mingling with the audience seated at 22 cafe tables.

But with those heels, they’ll probably just wave to acknowledge applause from the balcony.

Queen of queens Miranda Bryant plays host for a two-hour pageant that also showcases Vicky Fischer, Kedra Lattimore, Kandi Pop, Brie Daniels, and Tania Lashay, the 2022 Miss Pride of Salisbury – all performing to recorded dance music.

Delmarva Pride chair Kyle O’Donnell advises attendees to “bring your dollar bills.” Your tips will serve as support for your favorite queen of the night. As for ticket sales, O’Donnell says that “100 percent goes to support the work of Delmarva Pride Center,” which includes monthly socials “to encourage people to come out and feel a sense of belonging and community in public.” Coming up in July is a pool party, bowling in August, and a nature hike in September.

More than 100 vendors have signed up to sell their wares and wearables, as well as food trucks and beverage stands, and, of course, people from Delmarva Pride to tell you everything you need to know about their work and what they’re about.

“We offer the Mid-Shore, Upper Shore LGBTQ community a safe space to be themselves,” says Tina Jones, a Wittman native and secretary/treasurer of Delmarva Pride.

“It goes back to visibility,” says Concetta Gibson, co-chair of Delmarva Pride. “Our center, what we do, makes it easier for us to find each other.”

“It’s about freedom to be yourself and having support to help keep your head up,” Ivan Colon says, adding that being a gay Latino can “reduce your earning power.”

But when she did come out, Jones says, “I ripped the doors off the closet.”

The Pride Festival winds up on Sunday morning, ten a.m.-noon, with a Pride Brunch at ArtBar 2.0 in downtown Cambridge.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

DELMARVA PRIDE FESTIVAL
Friday, June 16-Sunday, June 18, in Easton and Cambridge, delmarvapridecenter.com

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Review: Chamber Music Festival’s All-Star Opener by Steve Parks

June 10, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

A legendary string quartet known for playing beautiful music together showed that they play just as well with others as the 38th annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival opened with a resounding bang, featuring not only chamber gems from the 18th and 19th centuries but also a jazz-like nugget written by a composer born in 1983.

Orion String Quartet, having announced that the upcoming 2023-24 season will be its last, was the guest-star attraction for the “Festival Opening Extravaganza!” The chamber festival’s co-artistic directors, violist Catherine Cho and cellist Marcy Rosen, were joined by Orion’s violinist brothers Daniel and Todd Phillips, violist Steven Tanenbom and cellist Timothy Eddy to perform Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Opus 36 for a dramatic opening night finale.

Orion’s foursome, which has essentially been the “house band” of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center since 1997, will perform its farewell concert next April at CMS’s Alice Tully Hall home base. Named for the eponymous constellation – Orion has performed practically all the worthy chamber music repertoire since its debut in 1987, including Bartok’s modern String Quartet No. 6 which they will play Sunday on the Ebenezer Theater stage.

The evening got off to a comfortably familiar start with Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478. Commissioned to write three piano quartets, the last two were canceled because the first was poorly received as it was considered too difficult to play and, perhaps, too challenging for listeners. Now, more than two centuries later, it is considered the first great piano quartet by any composer.

The first movement opens with a booming G-minor clarion call that quickly gives way to a gentle theme in a closely related key – B-flat. This signals a harmonic flux throughout the piece, managed with nimble skill by pianist Robert McDonald. His piano-led change of pace in the second-movement Adante introduces an introspective response by violinist Randall Goosby and violist Natalie Loughran with a tinge of regret in soft undertones by cellist Rosen. But the party mood resumes in the closing Rondo with conversational interplay between cello and violin/viola counterparts.

Next, for something completely different: “Cities of Air” for Flute and String Quartet by 40-year-old Paul Wiancko who also plays cello for Kronos Quartet, known for innovative musical choices. Commissioned by New Mexico’s Music from Angel Fire, the 10-minute piece had to wait a year or so for its debut, due to COVID shutdowns of live performances of everything from ballet to baseball. Tara Helen O’Connor’s flute sings like a bird in the opening notes that settle into more grounded string accompaniment before breaking out into a musical riot of each instrument seemingly on its own – violinists Goosby and Orion’s Daniel Phillips, violist Loughran and cellist Rosen – before concluding with a dreamy disposition while letting out the air, literally, of the flute.

Post-intermission was the Brahms sextet, which famously includes a reference only a musician or music scholar is likely to notice. A woman named Agathe, to whom Johannes was briefly engaged, has her name partially spelled out in consecutive notes, A-G-A-H-E.

The sonata-form first movement with a haunting sound emitted by first violist Tenenbom builds to crisis proportions by the other strings before yielding to the elegant main theme introduced by first violinist Daniel Phillips and repeated by first cellist Eddy. Emotional turmoil marks the second movement with violins (notably that of Todd Phillips) and violas (Cho’s) cry out separately as Rosen’s cello marks the time with minute-hand plucking.

The third-movement Adagio suggests a trance-like state of mind interrupted by an assertive cello duet. A contrapuntal exchange among the violin and viola pairs swells to an inspired melodic resolution of sheer beauty by Orion Quartet and two of the festival’s finest. While still emoting drama tempered by a soothing refrain, the final movement begins and ends with satisfying optimism, as does the evening.

Judging from opening night, this festival – themed as “Cultural Crossings” – is a musical must.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival

Six concerts through June 17, with a free open rehearsal,10 a.m. June 14, at the Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., Easton. chesapeakemusic.org

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Arts Diary: Classic Festivals, Gay Pride, & Old Glory

May 27, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

June gets off to a classical start with a pair of high-brow music festivals – first in Chestertown and a week later in Easton.

Opening on June 4, the 11th annual National Music Festival – its motto is “Great music performed by tomorrow’s stars” – combines tuition-free master-class tutoring and showcase concert opportunities for talented young musicians-in-residence on the historic Washington College campus, produced by OuterArts Maryland, a nonprofit focused on youth programs.

Starting on June 9, it’s followed by the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival in the resplendent and acoustically pleasing Ebenezer Theater downtown starring long-accomplished masters of their instruments.

The National Music Festival (NMF) presents concerts ranging from solo recitals and chamber quartets to full symphony orchestral performances. Among the highlights are the Festival Symphony Orchestra led by NMF artistic director Richard Rosenberg in a June 10 program featuring Beethoven’s 7th Symphony and the finale with the orchestra performing Mahler’s 7th and Nielsen’s Helios Overture, both at Decker Theatre on campus.

You can also savor free lunchtime “Chamber Bites” mini-concert pop-ups at locations all around town and two Saturday morning Farmers Market music appetizers in Fountain Park.

This year, Chesapeake Music’s chamber theme is “Cultural Crossings,” led by the festival’s co-artistic directors, cellist Marcy

violist Catherine Cho

Rosen and violinist/violist Catherine Cho. Both bring their string magic to a June 9 opening night of Mozart and Brahms, plus Tara Helen O’Connor featured in the “Cities of Air” Flute and String Quartet by Paul Wiancko.

Week 2 of the 38th annual festival opens with “Drama and Delight” chamber pieces by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak and closes with quartets by Haydn and Benjamin Britten and a Mendelssohn quintet. Featured players include clarinetist J. Laurie Bloom, retired festival co-founder, and violinist Randall Goosby, who returns to the Ebenezer after starring in Chesapeake Music’s Rising Stars concert in February.

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nationalmusic.us and chesapeakemusic.org As part of Pride Weekend, June 16-18, the Delmarva Pride Center presents its second annual Pride Drag Show, hosted by Miranda Bryant – no relation, we suspect, to the late Anita Bryant. Pride friends describe Miranda as “our own Eastern Shore darling.” The show, at the Avalon Theatre, starts at 7 p.m. June 16. To avoid political controversy, Delmarva Pride encourages attendees to bring along their “adult friends to see our queens.” Proceeds go to supporting gay pride events and services. For its part, the Avalon Foundation states on its website that it is a “nonpartisan organization which rents its facility to many organizations. The Foundation neither endorses nor censors content presented by facility renters.”

Elsewhere on the site, Avalon announces its free outdoor summer concert series Saturdays at seven on Harrison Street in front of Tidewater Inn and kitty-corner to the Avalon. First up on June 3 is the homegrown Delmarva Big Band, followed by several Navy bands and ensembles alternating with a medley of acts playing Latin, Motown, R&B, country, dance music, and more. You can set up your lawn chairs on the closed-off block between Dover and Goldsborough streets.

avalonfoundation.org

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June 14 is Flag Day, a national holiday that isn’t officially so. But if it’s observed in any state, it would be Maryland, where the original star-spangled banner once waved o’er Baltimore’s harbor and inspired Francis Scott Key, aboard a British warship bombarding Fort McHenry, to write, “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. . . .” Later to become, of course, our National Anthem.

Flag Day is a holiday with free admission at the Star-Spangled Flag House, a National Historic Landmark museum at Pratt and Albermarle streets within easy walking distance from the National Aquarium, the Power Plant dining/entertainment hub along the Inner Harbor, and nearby Port Discovery Children’s Museum. The 1793 Flag House interprets the life of Mary Pickersgill, who was commissioned to sew two Fort McHenry flags – the smaller storm flag and the gargantuan garrison flag (30-by-42 feet) that was a target of the bombardment on the night of Sept. 13, 1814 – toward the end of the War of 1812.

The victorious turning-point Battle of Baltimore is commemorated on Flag Day at Fort McHenry, a National Monument Historic Shrine. (Update: The Flag House has been closed for repairs this month but is scheduled to reopen by Flag Day. Check its website.)

To see the original Star-Spangled Banner, head south on I-95 to D.C., where it is encased at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

flaghouse.org, nps.gov/fomc and americanhistory.si.edu

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Memorial Day may be the unofficial start of summer, but it remains chilly at the beach before actual summer, June 21. So if you’re headed to Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach, here’s a nearby venue for outdoor pop concerts – away from the surf. Freeman Arts Pavilion in Selbyville, just across the Maryland-Delaware line from North Ocean City, has already opened its summer season. One of my favorite back-in-the-day American rockers, the Steve Miller Band (reconstituted), plays on June 29, when you may not need a sweater under the stars, followed by Ziggy Marley the next night. Coming up sooner on the calendar is Trombone Shorty on June 9; Keb Mo on June 17; Grand Funk Railroad on June 24, and Cheap Trick on June 25. Don’t forget to bring your lawn chairs. With these bands, you may be too mature for standing only.

freemanarts.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Summer Preview by Steve Parks

May 19, 2023 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

While the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is very much a year-round institution, its high season coincides with summertime. Although most of the museum’s visitors are amateurs at boating and fishing, its mission is to preserve the history and culture of watermen and women who made their livelihoods a vital industry of the Bay region.

While many of those who still make their living on the Bay’s waters do so in all seasons – sometimes under inhospitable conditions – for the rest of us, the closest we get to fishing, crabbing or oystering is at a supermarket seafood counter. Hopefully pre-frozen. At best, we’re fair-weather fishers. “Summertime, an’ the livin’ is easy,” as the Gershwin song goes, explains why Memorial through Labor Day is primetime at the maritime museum.

Festivals from Easter and Passover through the winter holidays draw well, but more so in the months after Memorial Day weekend. On the calendar June 16-18 is the Antique & Classic Boat Show and Coastal Arts Fair. It’s followed by Big Band Night on July 1 with a live concert of classic standards and a perfect waterfront vantage point on the museum campus to take in St. Michaels’ early Independence Day fireworks. Watermen’s Appreciation Day on Aug. 13 features a boat-docking contest, live music and a cash feast of steamed crabs, beer and more. (Bring your credit card.) Labor Day weekend brings the Sept. 2 Charity Boat Auction and a chance to get out on the water yourself or take a step up in your boating ambiance. October’s Mid-Atlantic Small Crafts Festival and the Oysterfest on the 8th and 28th, respectively, are big draws and two of my personal favorites. (If forced to choose, I’d go for the bivalves.)

Of course, maritime museum attractions are not limited to festival events. CBMM is open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days. And there’s so much to see that general admission tickets are good for two days – except on certain festival days.

But what’s new at the maritime museum, those of you who haven’t visited since last summer or fall? Beyond all the standing permanent installations, CBMM rotates special exhibitions on a yearly basis.

Jen Dolde, director of curatorial affairs and exhibitions, led a team that included exhibition designer Jim Koerner, VP of education and interpretation Jill Ferris and chief historian Pete Lesher to launch the extraordinary “Changing Chesapeake” exhibit. The team started by sending out a detailed call for artistic submissions. Of nearly 150 artworks received, a panel of five representing art, art education and science communities undertook a blind review – no names attached – of artworks and artist statements – to cull that number down to something close to the 78 in the show. The curatorial team then adjusted those selections to account for space limitations and to ensure a greater variety of artists.

“From the outset, our intention for this community response exhibition was to give primacy to the artists’ viewpoint,” Dolde said. “Changing Chesapeake,” which opened March 1 and runs through Feb. 25, 2024, is a not-to–be-missed multimedia expression of the emotional and practical impacts of climate change on the Bay region that is our home. Seventy artists from both sides of the Chesapeake and all around its watershed produced works ranging from tragic to comic commentary on what they’ve witnessed or are warning us about the earth’s devolving environmental burden on our children, grandchildren and generations beyond.

Edward Klein of St. Michaels directly addresses this concern in his song, “What Did a Crab Look Like?” Performed on video at the museum by guitarists and vocalists alongside a printed commentary, offers the “hope that future generations . . . will not have to ask . . .” the title question.

But we don’t need a fast-forward time machine to see what is and has been happening for years, if not decades. Straight ahead as you enter the two-story exhibit from the first-floor Steamboat Building entrance, you can’t miss “Looking Out at the Ghosts of the Coast,” a quilted blanket collage depicting a window framed by a homey 3-D crocheted curtain and the view of a naked dead forest outside. It’s a homespun masterpiece by Laura Guertin, an earth sciences professor at Penn State, Brandywine. It’s one of a dozen or so Ghost Forest references in this show as it is so outfront obvious to where we live. Have you visited Dorchester’s Blackwater Refuge lately?

While the home Guertin depicts is not yet threatened – so cozy inside, warm as a blanket – the same cannot be said of the “Sea Rise” installation by George Lorie of Rockville, which takes up a big chunk of the central floorspace of the second-floor galleries. The painted and laminated wood project is composed of collective waves representing Bay waters lapping at a peaked roof – all that remains visible of some family’s lost home.

Barbed comedy is what we make of “Ospreys Don’t Wear Coats,” by Annapolis resident Nicholas Thrift, about his oil-painted native bird wearing an overcoat while grasping two (likely) non-biodegradable coffee cups.

Virtually all the arts are represented here. If it wears you out, peering at all this thought-provoking imagery, you’re encouraged to touch the art – rare in a museum – of printed poetry on painted maritime-themed boards. Bench seats nearby invite you to read one or two at your leisure.

Putting all this together in a manner that seems to make linear sense was the job of designer Koernor, who Dolde gives credit for “grouping pieces so that they connect and play off one another.” Ferris is working to bring some of the artists back to the museum this summer for a presentation or an open conversation. We all need to have such conversations.

For more on “The Changing Chesapeake,” click to Val Cavalheri’s coverage of opening night (link here).

Accompanying this show, is a related photo exhibit in a conference room across that hall, “The Coming Coast” by filmmaker/photographer Michael Snyder. His photo series captures a making-the-best-of-it scene “Flooding, Norfolk, Virginia,” of a girl on a tree-limb swing whose flight is reflected in standing water below. “If you look out our backyard, it’s pretty much always flooded now,” says homeowner Angela Ramsay.

“Cafe on Smith Island,” photographed in Ewell, population 267, is augmented by an observance by Hoss Parks (no known relation): “I dig graves for a living. I may be the last one doing it because there ain’t nobody left. The young ones have almost all gone off.”

Still, life presses on elsewhere across the region. Among Snyder’s aerial photos is “New Houses Near Kent Narrows.” Lots of them. The Narrows, by definition, are all at water’s edge.

But aside from what’s new at the maritime museum, for those of you – newcomers, perhaps – there are free tours (with entrance fee) of such long-standing exhibitions as “Oystering on the Chesapeake” and “Waterman’s Wharf.” Or you can climb to the top of Hooper Strait Lighthouse, circa 1879, for better views of St. Michaels Harbor and the Miles River, or check out the working shipyard, where there’s always something nautical going on.

Finally, perhaps capping off the summer sometime in September, is the new visitors center just to the left of the parking lots as you enter the CBMM campus. As you’ll see, it’s well underway and promises to be a more accessible entryway for everyone – wheelchairs and strollers included. Never mind the out-of-character 21st-century architecture: It’s meant to signal a welcoming destination for all ages and avenues of life.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through October; 213 N. Talbot St., St. Michaels cbmm.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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